Hurricane Katrina

For some reason, CNN decided that it would air the latest installment of its comprehensive and informative miniseries on recent decades in America history with the 2000s despite the fact that many of the same actors, elected officials, journalists, and TV shows remained relevant into this decade.

On Tuesday's The Situation Room, CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin likened President Donald Trump enforcing immigration law by separating families to both a bank robbery and to Hurricane Katrina as the group discussed HHS Secretary Alex Alzar defending the administration's progress in reuniting children with their parents. And CNN analyst Jackie Kucinich displayed the latest example of CNN conflating legal asylum seekers with illegal immigrants who cross the border illegally and seek asylum after they are apprehended as she complained about some asylum seekers being separated from their children.

On Wednesday’s Morning Joe, both the hosts and the rest of the panel spent a significant amount of time covering President Trump’s visit yesterday to Puerto Rico. In so doing, they repeatedly and shamelessly suggested that Trump was a sociopath who would not help Puerto Rico if its leaders did not bow down to him.

The Associated Press couldn't keep race and income out of its coverage of Hurricane Harvey and Houston's recovery from it. Those angles were wholly predictable and tiresome, but the wire service's Juliet Linderman also decided she would tell readers what the establishment press has from all appearances unilaterally and falsely decided should be the conventional wisdom about the impact of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, namely that it "stands as a prime example of urban inequality and environmental injustice." Horse manure.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, George W. Bush was hammered in the press for flying over New Orleans and not visiting. On Monday’s CBS This Morning, Gayle King wondered if Donald Trump was being too attentive and if this was the “best time” to visit the disaster area.

Taking a left-wing angle on “climate change,” New York Times reporter Yamiche Alcindor swerved into radical racial ideas on black victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.Alcindor reported from Galveston, Texas, “In Sweltering South, Climate Change Is Workplace Hazard.” The text itself had a more provocative racial activist tone, with unchallenged allegations of racism around Hurricane Katrina and the Trump administration, and a shout-out to Black Lives Matter.

Using a tired line he’s been recycling since at least 2003, former vice president Al Gore criticized the media’s coverage of climate change — for not blaming it enough.

"Every night on the news is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation," Al Gore said on May 6, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He had been asked about how the news media reports the issue. Gore said he would "wait for the newscasters to connect the dots," but claimed they rarely do.

A major event that would damage Barack Obama’s presidency as much as Hurricane Katrina did George W. Bush’s is a white whale for conservatives, suggests Brian Beutler: They’re constantly, eagerly scanning the horizon for it, but they’ll never see it. Beutler finds it hard to imagine that any Democratic president would have his or her own Katrina, since Dems have made responding to natural disasters a high priority. Not so the pro-small government, austerity-driven Republicans, who are “ideologically ill-suited to meet [that] challenge.”

As we approach the 11th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the anti-Bush media feeding frenzy that followed, The Huffington Post is offering us "The Definitive of History of 'George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People,'" the splenetic outburst during a live Katrina telethon by that most egocentric of rappers, Kanye West. The HuffPost offered it as unloading a hip-hop Gettysburg Address.

Rachel Maddow gave covering fire for President Obama on her MSNBC show on Thursday over his initial decision to stay in Martha's Vineyard instead of visiting flood-stricken Louisiana. Maddow spotlighted the "scathing editorial" from a Lousiana newspaper criticizing the Democrat over the move, but defended the President by pointing a finger at former Governor Bobby Jindal.

It took former President Bush 5 days to visit Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina hit and the media would never let him off the hook for it, even calling it a “stain” he could “never recover from.” It’s been a week since devastating flooding hit many parts of the same state, destroying thousands of homes and killing 13 people but President Obama still has not stopped golfing in Martha’s Vineyard to visit. While none of the networks last night acknowledged the backlash Obama was facing, both ABC and CBS brought up the criticism this morning but took every chance to downplay the President’s role and defend his choice not to come to Louisiana’s aid.

Between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, the broadcast networks of NBC, ABC, and CBS presented several reports on the “massive” and “historic” flooding devastating Louisiana, even comparing storm damage to that suffered during Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Katrina. However, the one thing missing from the coverage was a single mention of the President of the United States, Barack Obama.

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